The cream of cream teas

The sun has come out to play. Hooray! To celebrate, we paid another visit to The New Forest. The target: an afternoon stroll around Wilverley Inclosure. The motivation: a highly recommended cream tea!

The weekend before last, we tried out Walk #12 from Jarrold Short Walks in the New Forest National Park around Lepe. This week it was Walk #11. I really like this book. It fits nicely in the pocket and the walks are all well described. (We've not got lost yet, anyway!) They also have a little bit of local knowledge embedded in them including, in this case, a top cream tea recommendation with a detour to The Station House.

For those not familiar with the concept, a cream tea consists of a scone (or two) with cream (usually clotted) and a jam. And tea, of course! (Although you can have coffee if you want - the scone with cream and jam is the star of the show!)

The Station House, it must be said, does a mighty fine cream tea. I opted for the "Porter's tea" - one plain and one fruit scone, with clotted cream and jam, plus a pot of quality tea. Well worth the walk!

The walk itself was a pleasant 4 mile round trip through the trees. Following a few days without rain, the route was not too muddy (unlike last week's in places) with the exception of one point where we had to "ford the Avon Water" - if you are going to do this walk, make sure you have waterproof shoes! (Or a change of socks, I guess.)